Back in 2000 when I used to work at Bank One, I was filling in as an assistant manager at the branch in New Caney. It was a very busy Friday (payday) so everyone was working in the teller line including me. Halloween was coming up so earlier in the day, some people from the corporate office had come in dressed in costumes and handed out candy. So about 3 o'clock, the place was packed with people cashing their payroll checks. A guy walks in wearing black overalls and a black sweatshirt with the hood on his head......and a black ski mask. He's carrying a large semi-automatic rifle and he tells everyone to get on the ground. When he first walked in, I saw him and I thought it was someone from the corporate office dressed up again. I remember thinking what a tasteless costume to wear into a bank. So the guy comes right up to the teller line, jumps over the counter, grabs me with his arm around the neck and holds this rifle right up to my right temple. He tells everyone to empty their cash drawers and if anyone gives him a dye-pack (fake money roll with red dye that explodes 2 minutes after passing the sensors at the door) he'll blow my head off. My head was spinning. I was numb. He eventually left....with the dye pack which exploded in the car he carjacked earlier in the day. The police caught him shortly afterwards. Turns out he was only 19 years old. I quit that job a week later. To this day, I won't go inside a bank. Strictly drive thru. Got any other stories?
Wow...that's crazy. When I was about 12 years old, my brother and I noticed that after we would fire off our .22 rifle, the spent casing had a little dent in it. We got experimental and decided to see what would happen if we shot the back of a live shell with a bb gun. Needless to say, the shell exploded! My brother got gashed through the shoulder. I was untouched. It wasn't until later that I realized I could have been seroiusly injured.
I was in Newport Beach, California body surfing when I was 18. I kinda took a tumble and ended up in pretty shallow water. As the water receded, I turned to look up at a big wave coming down right on top of me. The thing spun me and dragged me out to somewhat deeper water. As I started to run out of breath, I reached for what I thought was up to find my way to the surface and my hand hit the sand. I was completely turned around. At that point, I thought I was going to drown. I went completely limp hoping that I would float to the surface. About that time, the tide began to pull out again as another wave came and I could tell the water was starting to shallow. I managed to just barely get my head out of the water in time to get a breath and then I dove back down and stuck my hands and feet in the sand until the wave passed. I dragged myself out of the water and laid on the beach coughing for about 10 minutes.
Had a gun pulled on me once, but it was a cop who was gravely mistaken about my identity...but i knew he wasn't going to shoot me so it was scary, but not life threatening scary. Also, when i was in Florida a couple years ago, I was swimming out pretty deep, for sure past where most people go, but not further than i've gone before in Guatemala, Costa Rica, or Hawaii. Anyways, i was just enjoyin the waves as they pulled me out further and further (i got quite a bit beyond the "breaking point"). Anyways, out of nowhere a bunch of people on shore started screaming and telling me to swim in, i didn't realize how serious they were until i got back. But yeh, probably about 20 or 30 people were shouting (including my brother and mom) and told me they saw a shark within about 20 feet of me. I didn't realize it and still am not sure if they were mistaken or if i was oblivious. ----- those are my stories, but i couldn't even begin to imagine the scare and shock of ima_drummer2k.
On the evening of January 16, 1994, I met some friends at a pub near my apartment in Santa Monica. The next day was MLKs birthday, so I had no work. My friends and I tipped a few pints, and I stumbled home at 2AM. Only stripped down to my jeans before passing out on my bed. Got woken up at 4:30 AM by some slight earthquake shaking. I lifted my head up, said "eh no big deal" to myself, and put my head back down. As soon as I put my head back down on the pillow, all hell broke loose. The Northridge Earthquake was going full throttle. It felt like someone was wielding a jackhammer below the earth. Intense shaking. I made it to the doorframe between the living room and kitchen and braced myself. I watched my cupboard open on my right side, with dishes and glassware flying out, and watched my refrigerator turn over on my left side, with eggs and milk flying out. I watched as the transformers in the alley behind my apartment went "pop pop pop" in sequence and sparks flew. I remember thinking to myself "so this is how I'm going to die". Once the shaking was done, my next door neighbor, the apartment complex handiman, shut off the gas. I went down to my car to notice that a telephone pole had fallen and missed my car by about 10 feet. One wall of the convenience store next to my complex was rubble. I sat in my car listening to AM radio describe LAX being shut down. I managed to get an outside phone line, called my folks in Houston, woke them up, and told them "LA just experienced the big one, but I'm OK. I'll try to call you later". My neighbors and I spent the rest of the day barbecuing our defrosting meat and drinking our warming beer. We didn't get electricity back until 8PM that day. That day, plus the 1992 Rodney King riots, convinced me that my days in Los Angeles were numbered and that I had better start thinking about moving back to Texas. I finally did in 1998. Northridge Earthquake
Nothing even remotely like what imadrummer experienced, but here are a couple: I was driving from Kingwood to UH one Sunday afternoon. At one point, I found myself among a pack of about 25 cars, spread out over 3 lanes and all of which were driving close to one another. So I as soon as I weave through this group, I hit the gas to pull ahead of them. About 3 seconds after I clear the group of cars, my back right tire explodes and (as I later learned) wraps around the axle. My car, which was going about 85, goes into a spin right in the middle of the freeway. Fortunately, it managed to spin onto an exit ramp, right before the pack of cars overtook me. If that blowout had occured while I was still in that pack of cars, I'd probably be dead (or thousands of dollars poorer). Less dramatic, I was cleaning my studio last week and was attempting to untangle some power cords. Stupidly, I yanked one power cord pretty hard while kneeling on the ground. As I continue trying to untangle things, I hear a creaking sound behind me. I twist around and see one of the powered P.A. speakers (on a stand) falling straight toward me. I manage to catch it about 2 feet from my face.
I once got into a spirited discussion with a guy who had been awake on meth for nearly a week. He decided I was trying to cheat him and pulled out a pistol. He fumbled the gun and I was out the open door like cannon fire. Thank God he was high enough that he couldn't have hit water if he fell out of a boat, but it was still terrifying.
Jeff, going limp was the exact right instinct. I learned this the hard way the first time I was surfing in Mexico. In larger more powerful waves, I would get knocked off my board, slammed by the wave, and then sucked back over the falls for a second and third drubbing. The first couple of times this happened I would struggle against the wave to try and reach the surface (without knowing where it was), use up all of my oxygen, and come near to panicking. It sucked. Once I realized that the best thing to do was just relax, while protecting my head from the board, until the wave passed by and I could kick to the surface, it was much better. One of my scariest experiences was surfing in Carmel, CA with my brother. The water was bitterly cold and we paddled out at an unfamiliar break. Before we realized it, we were caught in a riptide and were being swept out to sea. It was quite a struggle to paddle back in and we came close to getting hypothermia because we were wearing our wimpy Texas gulf coast wetsuits, that were way to thin for Northern California waters.
Wow RMTex, that is REALLY scary.... you almost didn't make it to the Rockets first championship! If you were a Jazz or Lakers fan, you'd probably be dead right now...
When I was very young (late 72-early 73), I came into contact with the Hong Kong Flu and did not take to it kindly. I was in an oxygen tent for a few weeks. My mother was told not to expect a good outcome. Guess I showed them.
This sounds so similar to what happened to me back in '98. I was driving in a caravan to Austin for Thanksgiving -- alone in my '91 VW Camper, but behind my friends in their SUV. We were cruising along at about 75mph right outside LaGrange, and my left-rear tire blew. I did a 540 right in the middle of the highway and flipped completely over on the side of the road. It felt like it was in slow motion and I remember that "Wave of Mutilation" was blasting on the stereo. I got hit in the head by a 30 gallon Igloo cooler, but remarkably enough, walked away with only a little piece of glass in my hand. All the glass had shattered and the frame of the van had almost collapsed. If you looked at it head-on, it kinda looked like a parallelogram after it came to a stop.
Near Death experiences: When I was 3, a car hit me and I had to have emergency surgery. When I was 8, my family was being robbed and I tried to disarm the robber's shotgun with my Spiderman extended arm toy. Needless to say, it didn't work but both the robber and my family were surprised I did this. When I was 9, I almost drown by casually going to the deep end of the pool. My friend's sister saved me. When I was 24, I hydroplaned on the freeway where 59 met 45 and was hit by 2 cars. Last year, I bought some stuff on ebay without telling my wife.
I was on a plane which lost the hydraulic system. We were flying from San Diego to Houston and the pilot noticed right away that the hydraulic system was not working. We dumped fuel into the Pacific and they decided to land in L.A. (since their airport was better equipped to handle emergencies). After a harrowing 40-50 minutes we finally landed on a foamed runway with all of the emergency vehicles in place. We skidded for a while and used the entire runway to come to a stop.
I'm glad that my wife doesn't read these boards. She is nervous about me surfing anyway. I keep telling her it's just water and she shouldn't be scared. I haven't had near death experiences surfing, thank goodness, but it could have been bad at one point. I'm still a beginner, and my friend and I are out about sunset are in Ventrura county at a breach break, just trying to catch few rides after work one day. The stuff is mostly walled closed outs, and I'm on a long board. The waves are pretty brutal and about 3-4 ft with an occasional 5ft. We were getting worked by all the closeouts so close to shore anyway. Then I turn around and it seems like a larger one is coming. I had just gotten worked, and thought about trying to paddle in and run away from it, but I knew that might not work. I paddled hard to try and make it over it before it broke, and I succeeded. The wave ended up being 7-8ft. When I was on the back side of it I couldn'ty even see the shore, just a big wall of grey. Also because it was sunset, when I was right in front of it, the sun was totally blocked out, and it was super dark until I made it over the wave. My friend who is a more experienced surfer got clobbered by the thing, but he did exactly what Jeff did eventually, and laid flat on the sand with his hands feet dug in. Other than that, there were a couple of close calls while climbing some rocks, and mountains in big bend, though one of my friends was far closer to death than I was, as he was hanging there not able to find a close handhold, and had to make a swing for a ledge that could have been the end if he missed it. The closest I had was an insulin reaction, where my wife saved my life by realizing that something was wrong. I was out of it, and speaking nonsense, and paramedics had to take me to the hospital. It was sucky.
Tubbing down the guad when was 15. We sat below one of the drops and collected beer from peoples overturned coolers. After getting quite drunk we were tubbing along. As I went over a drop the water caught the back side of my tube and flipped me over backward and just kept churning me under. I struggled to get back to the top and kept getting pulled down. I felt my feet hit some rocks and I pushed off as hard as I could. Somehow I got to the surface and hacked and coughed water out and was glad to be alive.
Well, I grew up in the South and was active in the Civil Rights movement and I was a Vietnam protester. Those events brought about their fair share of danger. Ironically, I also fought in Vietnam and that was dangerous too.
For some odd reason, this had me laughing hard!!! I guess I could see my kids attempting this. Out of curiosity...what was the reaction of the robber...
I don't have any really good stories. Just one day in December 2001 I was driving home from work, and it had been raining so the roads were slick. I remember I was kind of day dreaming because I was getting married in a few days, and was listening to a Radiohead cd. Well I was on the beltway feeder a few miles from my house, and in the right lane going about 50. I hit some water and totally spun around , and eventually spun up over the curb and into a field. When I finally stopped I got out of my truck and was about 30 feet from the road. Some nice guy stopped in the rain and pulled my truck out of the field. He pointed out my tire marks, and said I was lucky I didn't get hurt. It turns out I was only about 5 feet from hitting a telephone pole. Somehow I drove home pretty rattled, but I was fine and so was my truck.
